


215. archaeology

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [209]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “I want a tattoo,” says the woman the second she walks into Sarah’s shop.





	

“I want a tattoo,” says the woman the second she walks into Sarah’s shop; the words are mechanical and hurried, like she’s been practicing them. Sarah would say she isn’t the normal sort of person to walk into Sarah’s shop, but really she gets all types. (The soccer mom was her particular favorite. Something about celebrating sobriety; Sarah never asked.) The woman with the stuck-a-fork-in-a-socket hair and the fingers nervously twisting together is nothing new.

“Alright,” Sarah says easily. She’s met with nothing else but stunned blinking.

“Oh,” says the stranger. “Now I…can have a tattoo.”

“I mean, you have to pay me,” Sarah says, meaning it as a joke but realizing uneasily that it might… _not_ be a joke.

“I have money,” says the woman in the doorway, and hurries over to the counter to drop a wad of crumpled-up bills. They are very big bills. Sarah almost wonders where they came from, and then thinks better of it.

“That’s – more than I need,” she says awkwardly. “But yeah, if you want a tattoo, it’s yours. That’s what we do.”

The only response is a frantic bob of the head.

“I’m Sarah,” she says, in the hope of getting a return introduction.

“Helena,” says Helena. “What sort of tattoos…are…there.”

It’s going to be a long day, isn’t it. Sarah mourns her tea break with an internal sigh and goes to get the book of designs. “I dunno,” she says. “Whatever you can think of, yeah? Unless you want an infinity symbol on your wrist, I officially don’t do those anymore.”

“Why.”

“Better you don’t ask,” Sarah says, sitting back on her stool and plopping the book on the counter. The answer is boring, actually: she just got sick of it. Some of the girls who wanted that tattoo were cute, but there were a lot of them, and after a while even _she_ got exhausted of an endless line of cute girls. They’ll find another tattoo parlor. It’ll all work out.

Helena pages through the book with a frightened delicacy, like she’s afraid she’ll rip it. “Maybe I can help if you tell me what you’re getting it for, yeah?” Sarah says.

“No,” Helena says, sharply urgent. “No reasons.”

“Alright, then,” Sarah mutters to the countertop. Her leg is bouncing on the stool. She debates the merit of turning on music, realizes sourly it’ll probably scare Helena off, drops the idea. Helena is staring at some glittery dolphin tattoos with an expression of perfect, blank interest.

“I used to hurt people,” she says abruptly. “That is why the moneys. But now I don’t. I don’t want my body to be that body anymore. It is my body now. And I wasn’t – allowed. To change it. In any way but the way other people told me to change it. So. Now I am changing it, because I want to, and not because somebody is telling me to put something on my skin.”

Sarah blinks. At Helena, at the pile of (suspiciously stained, actually) money on the counter, at the tattoo book. Helena taps one of the dolphins with her finger. “I like the fish,” she says, voice just as flat as it was when she said _hurt people_.

“I don’t know if that’s what you’re lookin’ for,” Sarah says.

“I know,” Helena says. “But I like it anyways.” She keeps paging through. Out of nowhere she starts humming to herself; it sounds like a slowed-down, dramatic version of the _Spongebob Squarepants_ theme song.

Sarah drums her hands on the countertop – the heels, the fingers, the palms. She’s thinking about changing. “Wings?” she tosses in Helena’s general direction.

Helena’s head snaps up. “How do you know,” she says. Her voice is the Mariana Trench. Her eyes, the set of her mouth – her teeth – it all belongs to something that lives down there.

“Know what,” Sarah says, managing an admirable display of polite confusion even as she reaches carefully for the switchblade tucked under the counter.

But Helena’s face snaps back to something resembling normal. “Nothing,” she says. “Wings. With feathers?”

 _What other kind could I be talking about_ , Sarah thinks, but then thinks better. “Yeah,” she says. “Was just a thought, though, you don’t need to—”

“I like this,” Helena says. She’s flipping through the book faster and faster, eyes unseeing. “Not on the back. I don’t like – I don’t want. That. Not on the back.”

“Yeah, sure, fine,” Sarah says. She pulls out a sketchpad, starts inking out feathers. Across the counter Helena watches her, wary and angry and terrified.

“Something like this?” Sarah says, spinning the sketchbook so it faces Helena’s direction.

“Something like that,” Helena echoes. “Maybe. Maybe yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
